{"id":12,"date":"2019-12-09T18:57:35","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T18:57:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2019\/?p=12"},"modified":"2019-12-19T13:44:26","modified_gmt":"2019-12-19T21:44:26","slug":"a-rich-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2019\/a-rich-life\/","title":{"rendered":"A Rich Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Renunciation is its own reward<\/strong>, and what you give up comes back to you manifold. That\u2019s what Rosey and Jonathan Hakim (\u201904 engineering and \u201901 physics) found out when they decided to live and work in the slums of Asia. The couple moved to Bangkok and worked with street children and trafficked girls; for the past seven years they have been living in a slum in north India.<\/p>\n

Jonathan\u2019s passion at school was astrobiology; his long-term plan was to be the mission astrobiologist on the first manned mission to Mars. Turns out, he was needed more on Earth. \u201cI heard God calling me to serve others, rather than to pursue my own career,\u201d he says. \u201cI was moved to serve as a teacher in places that have been deprived of access to quality education.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Illustration<\/p>\n

Jonathan says they were welcomed into their new world. \u201cFrom the time we first stepped into the slum, people invited us into their homes, served us chai and were excited to talk, even when our Hindi\/ Urdu competency was almost non-existent. Though there was some distrust and uncertainty\u2014some neighbors thought we must be CIA or even criminals on the run!\u201d<\/p>\n

Rosey credits Harvey Mudd with imparting lessons that have helped in their new life. \u201cThe rigor of the academic study, on top of engagement with the communal life of the College, helps me handle challenging tasks, prioritize, be humble and live interdependently with others,\u201d she says. \u201cThe exposure I received at the 5Cs to people of different ethnicities, religions and ideas opened me to \u2019the other\u2019 and to working toward mutual understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jonathan is the lead teacher and trainer for Global Dream, a program that promotes literacy. \u201cWe\u2019ve helped about 150 children and adults in our slum become literate, while starting dozens of literacy projects in slums across our city and training groups in nine Indian states,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Rosey also works with the literacy program and counsels trafficked and abused girls. \u201cThe stories that the girls have lived and the trauma they carry is brutal, but being able to see them reach toward hope and a new life helps keep me going,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The Hakims have developed close relationships with several families, becoming \u201ca \u2019big brother and big sister\u2019 to the young men and women in those families,\u201d Rosey says. \u201cWe\u2019ve established a relationship of genuine trust, and along with it the respect and the obligations of family.\u201d Family is paramount. \u201cFamilies are very, very tight here, and even in the most broken families there is a degree of solidarity that is difficult to wrap your head around,\u201d Jonathan says.<\/p>\n

At one point the Hakims, who have two children of their own\u2014baby Sophia and foster daughter Chhaya, who is completing 12th grade\u2014took responsibility for a young man with bipolar disorder, nurturing him for months until he recovered enough to resume teaching in the literacy program. They also have responded to emergency needs as they\u2019ve cropped up, at times paying for life-saving medical care that families couldn\u2019t afford on their own. \u201cIt is embarrassing because it can be such small sums for us that we\u2019ll never even notice in our life, but lack of those small sums is the difference between life and death for them,\u201d says Jonathan.<\/p>\n

Daily life in the slums is a hardship. This year, between late April and early June, there were 32 days that were 108 degrees or hotter; at times it hit 120 degrees. \u201cYou\u2019re surrounded by brick and concrete that holds in every bit of heat,\u201d says Rosey. \u201cThere\u2019s no ventilation. So many people doing washing in close quarters ramps up the humidity, there\u2019s no A\/C, and the electricity for the fans might give out at any minute. Imagine trying to work under such conditions or care for a newborn baby. Imagine when the water stops flowing, as happens from time to time.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the daily grind is what you make it. \u201cWashing clothes by hand becomes space for prayer; making Indian flatbread allows me the joy of creating beautiful food,\u201d Rosey says. Adds Jonathan, \u201cThere is significantly more social interaction than in our previous lives. We live maybe 100 meters from the road, and when I go out at least 10 people will greet me in that stretch, and two or three of them will want me to stop and talk longer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jonathan says their slum is diverse, with people from different backgrounds, regions, religions, socioeconomic levels and plans for their lives. \u201cMost are poor, yet remarkably generous. I\u2019ve had someone stop me to discuss American politics with more insight than many of my American friends\u2014while someone else will ask me which train goes to the American village, and how many hours does it take to get there?\u201d<\/p>\n

Humor is essential. \u201cOur neighbors laugh at more things than you would imagine,\u201d he says. \u201cIt can be a coping mechanism for a difficult life: If you don\u2019t laugh whenever possible, where will you find joy? At other times it\u2019s a defense mechanism, a sign of discomfort when a proper response isn\u2019t clear. And I think they might just find a lot of stuff really funny.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many people in their community came from the countryside to find work. While better infrastructure and services would improve their current lives, \u201cI\u2019m beginning to think that sustainable, community-centered rural development is the healthy way forward for both people and the environment,\u201d Jonathan says.<\/p>\n

\u201cSlums are not inevitable,\u201d Rosey says. \u201cI never thought I was greedy, but we in the West don\u2019t know that our standard of living perpetuates the unfair wages, lack of housing and increased pollution that we see our neighbors suffer from here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like their neighbors in the slums, they don\u2019t give up hope. \u201cAnother way is possible,\u201d Jonathan says. \u201cBut it will only come when we are able to understand how our lifestyles impact the lives of those on the other side of the globe, and become willing to entertain the possibility of changing our own lives dramatically in order to give greater opportunity to theirs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Renunciation is its own reward, and what you give up comes back to you manifold. That\u2019s what Rosey and Jonathan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":100,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}